


Adamant

by faithlessone



Series: Stormheart - (M!Trevelyan/Cassandra) [11]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluffy Ending, Here Lies the Abyss, Hurt/Comfort, Promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25187188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithlessone/pseuds/faithlessone
Summary: Trevelyan goes into the Fade, and discovers the truth about what happened at the Conclave. That he isn't the chosen one, the Herald of Andraste.“Your Inquisitor is a fraud, Cassandra,” the Nightmare had told her, and he can’t help but think the demon was right, for all she had denied it.The thoughts plague him all the way through the Fade. Ever step taken, every memory recovered, every sad dream discovered, it beats in the back of his mind. He is a fraud, a fake, a failure...
Relationships: Cassandra Pentaghast/Male Trevelyan, Male Inquisitor/Cassandra Pentaghast
Series: Stormheart - (M!Trevelyan/Cassandra) [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1756030
Comments: 8
Kudos: 26





	Adamant

It was _not_ Andraste who saved him.

He was _not_ destined for this.

It was an accident.

A bumbling fool in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Divine died saving _his_ life.

“Your Inquisitor is a fraud, Cassandra,” the Nightmare had told her, and he can’t help but think the demon was right, for all she had denied it.

The thoughts plague him all the way through the Fade. Ever step taken, every memory recovered, every sad dream discovered, it beats in the back of his mind. He is a fraud, a fake, a failure. A small, bitter part of him wants to curl up and let the nightmares take him, but he can’t do that to his party. To Varric, Dorian, Hawke, Stroud… especially not to Cassandra. She believes in him.

Believed.

Surely she will think twice about that now.

They reach the rift, but the Nightmare blocks their path. He throws everything he has left at it and its demons, but it isn’t enough. Of course, it isn’t enough. Fraud. Fake. Failure.

“We need to clear a path!” Stroud shouts.

“Go! I’ll cover you!” Hawke calls.

They argue between themselves over which will stay, and he wants, so desperately, to tell them that he will stay instead. But can he close the rift from the inside? What about the other rifts? Corypheus is still out there, still waging war on Thedas. It would be selfish to stay.

But that means…

“Stroud…” his voice breaks before he can finish the sentence. Before he can condemn a man, a friend, to death.

“Inquisitor, it has been an honour.”

Why does that make it worse?

They break through the rift in the main hall, exactly as predicted. It’s strange – with the way the Fade had warped his senses, his emotions, he had half-expected to be dumped out somewhere in the middle of nowhere, a last insult from the Nightmare.

Inquisition soldiers and Grey Wardens alike rally around them, cheering as he dispatches the last of the demons and closes the rift. Before today, those cheers would have fortified him. Now, their enthusiasm makes his stomach turn.

Josephine had asked him, back in Haven so many months ago, what the official position of the Inquisition should be. Whether he had been saved by Andraste, or not. He had told her, unequivocally, to tell them that Andraste herself had shielded him from harm. The news had gone out, and spread all over Thedas.

What does he tell them now?

Fraud. Fake. Failure.

They’re waiting for a speech, he knows. Waiting for the great Inquisitor, the Herald of Andraste, to announce the victory. But the words that usually come so easily to his lips are stopped in his throat, choking him.

“She was right,” Hawke says, striding forward. “Without the Nightmare to control them, the mages are free, and Corypheus loses his demon army.”

He should be happy about that, shouldn’t he? Another aspect of the dark future that won’t come to pass.

“Though,” Hawke continues. “As far as they’re all concerned, the Inquisitor broke the spell with the blessing of the Maker.”

Fraud. Fake. Failure.

“Once they understand what really happened…”

“Honestly,” Hawke interrupts. “After all the death they’ve seen… Perhaps it would be better to let them believe the legend.”

He hates it, but he sees Hawke’s point. To backtrack would undermine the authority of the Inquisition. It’s the last thing they need, especially now. The demon army may have been halted in their tracks, but there is still the Archdemon, the assassination, the Venatori, the rifts, Corypheus himself…

A soldier runs up to them, breaking his train of thought.

“Inquisitor, the Archdemon flew off as soon as you disappeared. The Venatori magister is unconscious but alive. Cullen thought you might wish to deal with him yourself.”

How is he supposed to judge anyone in Andraste’s name again?

“As for the Wardens,” he continues, a warden stepping up beside him. “Those who weren’t corrupted helped us fight the demons.”

“We stand ready to help make up for Clarel’s… tragic mistake,” the warden says, pressing a hand to his chest in salute. “Where is Stroud?”

His stomach turns again, but this time Hawke does not step in to help explain.

“Warden Stroud died striking a blow against a servant of the Blight,” he announces, praying that his voice won’t shake. “We will honour his sacrifice, and remember how he exemplified the ideals of the Grey Wardens. Even as Corypheus and his servants tried to destroy you all from within.”

It’s the kindest way he can think of saying ‘I left him in the Fade to die.’

“Inquisitor, we have no one left of any significant rank. What do we do now?”

He looks to Hawke, but the Champion is staunchly avoiding his gaze. The decision is left to him now, it seems. This was so much easier, before. When he offered the mages an alliance in Redcliffe, he had been buoyed by the idea that Andraste had protected him for a reason; that her guidance would lead him to the right decision.

But now…

He sees only two options. Exile the Wardens for their brethren’s crimes, or bring them into the Inquisition. Hesitating for just a moment, he glances at Cassandra. Her expression is unreadable, neither angry nor encouraging, but she holds his gaze steadily.

He can’t punish the whole order for the sake of those who fell under Corypheus’ spell. Not when those who stayed uncorrupted aided in the fight. Not when it was _his_ actions that led to the death of the one who could have been their commander.

“You stay, and do whatever you can to help,” he declares. “Stroud died for the ideals of the Wardens. In war, victory. And we are still at war. Do you believe the wardens can still help?”

“I do, your worship.”

The title feels like a knife to his heart.

“You’re still vulnerable to Corypheus,” he reminds them. “And possibly his Venatori. But there are plenty of demons that need killing.”

“After all that, you give them yet another chance?” Cassandra’s voice cuts through him.

He chose wrong.

Fraud. Fake. Failure.

He can’t take it back now though. Like Josephine said after Redcliffe, it would make them look incompetent at best. It would make _him_ look incompetent. And he doesn’t need any help in that regard.

Hawke tells him that she is going to Weisshaupt, but he barely hears her, too consumed with Cassandra’s disappointment in him. He watches the soldiers and wardens depart, presumably to spread the news.

“Good luck, Inquisitor. It’s been an honour.”

The echo of Stroud’s words in Hawke’s voice makes his stomach turn yet again. They should have _stayed_. They should have all fought. If they had weakened the Nightmare a little further, perhaps they all could have escaped. All lived.

“Take care of Varric for me?” she adds.

He nods in reply, watching her as she departs after the wardens. Cassandra looks as if she’s going to approach him, and… he can’t. Not right now. He will have to face her displeasure at some point, her righteous anger at the entire situation, but…

Fraud. Fake. Failure.

Like a coward, he turns on his heel and strides away through the fortress, not stopping for breath until he is outside. The base of operations, a small village of tents and lean-tos, is set up nearby, and he heads for it. He has a tent there, a benefit of his position. Small, but private. One of the scouts is lingering nearby on guard duty.

It’s another spineless act, but he calls him over.

“I don’t want to be disturbed. Can you make sure I’m not?”

The scout nods, overwhelmed but seemingly joyful to be given such a responsibility. “Of course, your worship.”

Once he’s inside, the canvas sealed behind him, he falls onto the bedroll, head in his hands. He wants to retch, to bring up all the churning bile within him, but it feels like another sign of his weakness, so he doesn’t.

How does he go on now?

He has to, he knows that. He doesn’t have a choice. The rifts need closing, and the whole Inquisition, the whole world, is relying on him. 

The quiet thanks of the refugees in the Hinterlands, the grateful awe of the soldiers in the Fallow Mire, the joyful cheers of the pilgrims at Haven and Skyhold… how much of that was his title? The grand story that he was told, that he believed, that he propagated?

He closes his eyes and pictures that very specific expression that Cassandra has when people thank him. That quiet, reluctant pride. How much of that was because he was blessed by Andraste?

Will she ever make that expression again?

He doesn’t deserve it.

Fraud. Fake. Failure.

Dimly, he hears voices outside his tent.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t. He told me…”

“I do not care what he told you. You will stand aside.”

“Please, Lady Cassandra…”

“Stand aside!”

Can he face her yet? He wants to, wishes he was strong enough, but he can’t help feeling that she’s come here to hand in her resignation. That she can’t follow him anymore. Can’t follow the man who was responsible for her friend’s death, who took her bodily into the Fade and subjected her to the terror of the Nightmare. Cowardly as it is, he’d prefer to delay her inevitable departure a little while longer.

“Leave me alone!” he yells.

The voices fall silent. A rustle of the canvas, and then, nothing. Stillness.

For a moment, he presses his face into the thin pillow at the head of his bedroll. Sleep is the last thing he wants right now, but remaining awake is almost as bad. He rolls over, staring at the canvas above him and wishing it were a starry sky.

That was the last time he felt truly at peace.

It might be the last time he is _ever_ truly at peace.

Time passes achingly slowly. Eventually, he strips off his enchanter’s coat, checking it for damage and bloodstains, and using the magic that Dorian had taught him to repair it. Likewise the body armour he wears beneath. Then he turns his attention to himself. A few bruises that he heals without thinking about them, a long cut on his arm that he has to spend a little more attention on.

His mind drifts to her again.

He usually offers to heal what little bits of damage she has sustained in protecting him. She doesn’t always accept his help, but it’s the thought that counts, he’s sure. The offer is always there. Was she hurt, in the siege or the Fade after it? Who is helping her now?

When he’s finished, he drains the remnants of his waterskin, and wishes he’d had the forethought to send the scout for food before he holed up here. Nothing to be done now. He heard the rest of the army returning hours ago, and though the camp sounds quiet again now, he’s certain that there will be a fair few people on watch.

He lies back down again.

Closes his eyes…

… and wakes up screaming.

The entrance of his tent is thrown open from the outside, and Cassandra stands in the space, silhouetted by the campfire behind her.

He pushes himself up onto his elbows, still shaking and gasping for breath.

“Brennan?”

Her voice is soft and low and terrified, and it kills him.

“Nightmare,” he bites out, wishing he had the strength to tell her he’s fine, to send her away. “Just a nightmare.”

She hesitates in the opening of the tent, and then steps forwards, offering her hand to him. He takes it, allowing her to pull him up. It doesn’t escape him that, while he is dressed only in his undershirt and breeches and boots, she is still in almost full armour. The armour he had made for her. All she is missing is her helmet, gauntlets and gloves. A thought occurs to him – has she been sat outside his tent all this time?

“Come with me,” she says, in a tone that brooks no argument.

He follows.

She leads him through the camp, ignoring the curious looks from the scouts and soldiers still out on watch. His hand is still in hers, and he doesn’t want to point it out in case she hasn’t noticed, and she lets go of him.

When she reaches flat sand on the other side of a rocky outcropping, out of sight and earshot of the camp, she stops. The sky above them is full of stars from horizon to horizon. It feels like they are truly alone. The only two souls in the whole of Thedas.

“Cassandra?” he says softly.

She remains silent for a minute, looking up at the sky above them. He looks down, gaze drifting to their still joined hands. Finally, he hears her speak.

“Please, do not do that again.”

Which? The siege, dragging her into the Fade, recruiting the Grey Wardens? He has done so many things today that she has disapproved of.

“What?”

She tilts her head, making eye contact with him for the first time since his tent.

“Do not block me out.”

Of all the…

“I’m sorry.”

Her fingers tighten around his, but whether she’s doing it on purpose or from instinct, he can’t tell. His free hand hangs loosely at his side. He wants so badly to touch her, but he can’t. Not until he knows why she dragged him all the way out here, so far away from anyone else.

“We are friends, aren’t we?” she says, and she sounds so… unsure, it breaks his heart all over again. “Brennan?”

Maker, this _hurts_.

“I thought so.”

She nods. A sharp, decisive movement. “Stargazing is the perfect way to calm your brain down after a long day. I have it on very good authority.”

His own words, parroted back to him, have never sounded so sweet. If she has come out here to give him her resignation, this is the cruellest way she could possibly do it, but he finds that he has stopped believing that that is her intention.

“Cassandra?”

She starts to sit, forcing him to do the same as she still has a tight grip on his hand. When they are settled, she looks at him again.

“I was thinking about… what happened,” she starts. “Historians will one day ask what happened at Adamant Fortress. In the Fade. I was there. I saw it with my own eyes. It must be recorded.”

This… isn’t what he was expecting.

“That’s an excellent idea.”

“I certainly thought so. Until I started trying to put it into words. I still don’t know what to say about the spirit of the Divine. I saw her there, heard her voice, yet I cannot claim with certainty it was really her. The Chantry teaches us that the souls of the dead pass through the Fade… so it _could_ have been her. Yet… even so.”

“I believe it was the Divine,” he says softly. “She helped us, one last time.”

“I hope that’s true. I want to believe it.” She pauses for a moment, looking up at the stars, and then back at him. “When I realised we were physically in the Fade, I was terrified almost beyond reason. The last time such a thing happened, we created darkspawn. We created Corypheus. The world needs to know the truth this time. No more legends lost to the ages.”

“I agree.”

She nods again.

“You were terrified too, weren’t you?”

He doesn’t see the point of hiding it. “Not at first. As we journeyed onwards, yes.”

“The Nightmare demon?”

“The memories.”

Her fingers tighten around his again. “I am sorry you had to relive that.”

He keeps waiting for her to accuse him. To confront him about the Divine’s death. To tell him that she is disappointed that he isn’t who she thought he was. Who _he_ thought he was. But it doesn’t come.

“The Divine died, saving me,” he says, in case the nuance had escaped her in her terror. “If I hadn’t been there…”

“If you hadn’t been there, the Divine would have been lost to blood magic,” she interrupts, with an expression of utter and incomprehensible disbelief. “If you hadn’t been there, Corypheus would have the Anchor, and he would have ended the world at the Conclave.”

“But I wasn’t sent there. Andraste didn’t push me out of the Breach. I’m nothing.”

“Do you truly believe that?”

He frowns. “We saw what happened.”

“I saw a good man responding to a woman in pain. Opening a door when he could have run away. Retrieving a weapon to keep it away from a monster. I saw a good man striving to get out of the Fade, and I saw my friend helping him.”

“She could have saved herself.”

Cassandra shakes her head. “She would not. It was not her way. You rescued her from the blood mages. You set her free. She would not have left her saviour to die if there was something she could do to help him.”

“It doesn’t bother you that it was her, and not Andraste?”

She shakes her head again.

He wants to believe her, but the voice in the back of his head is still repeating those same three words. Fraud. Fake. Failure.

Cassandra _believes_. She’s the most dedicated Andrastian he has ever met. All this time, she has believed in _him_ … He has to ask.

“How much of what you liked about me was because I was the Herald, and how much because I was… me?”

She laughs.

But it’s not a mean laugh, not a taunt. It’s a desperate, disbelieving, incredulous laugh.

“Brennan… you are irritating. You are _infuriating_. Reckless. You make bold decisions without talking to your advisors. You have no sense of self-preservation, no ability to turn down a request. You care _too_ much about others.”

He is beginning to seriously regret asking her.

“None of those things are because you are the Herald of Andraste. None because you are the Inquisitor. It is _because of those things_ that I like you. Because you are passionate, and stubborn, and good-hearted, and you make the world a better place simply by existing in it. You force the world to be a better place.”

Oh.

That wasn’t…

“Thank you, I think.”

She grumbles at him. “You truly thought that I would… stop believing in you, because of this? We have known each other for more than a year, Brennan. Travelled all over Ferelden and Orlais. Fought side-by-side. I have seen every aspect of you that there is to see. And still, I follow you. I am still your friend.”

Well, it sounds foolish when she says it like _that_.

“And the world? What will happen when they find out?”

“They will see the man I see. Who stepped out of the Fade, twice. Who closed the Breach. Who stopped a demon army from destroying the world. Who has not finished yet.”

There is a fire in her eyes, visible even in the dim light of the stars. A passion he has rarely seen in anyone, let alone her. And it is all directed at him.

Just for a moment, his eyes flicker to her lips, and he wonders what she would do if he leaned over and kissed her.

Probably punch him.

He’d deserve it.

Instead, he runs his thumb over her bare knuckles.

She smiles.

“Do you… need my help? Healing?”

The normality seems to soothe the situation yet further. Gently, she releases his hand, reaching up to unbuckle her armour. There is a clean slice on her neck, just at the place where her gorget ends and her helmet begins. Not deep, but if it had been…

He presses his fingers to her throat as she tilts her head to give him better access. When did this happen? During the siege or the Fade? How close did he come to losing her?

When that is sealed, gone without a trace, she leans back against the rocks and directs his attention to her side. Searching her eyes for permission, he gently pushes up her undershirt. A large, dark bruise spreads across her ribs. Bigger than his hand can span. Lightly, he frames the edges of it with his fingers, and she flinches.

Why didn’t she take a healing potion? How has she carried on walking, let alone fighting, like this?

“I’m sorry.”

“Just… get it over with.”

He forces himself to be as gentle as he possibly can. Fingers feather-light on her skin. Sunlight wisps of healing magic, softly sinking, stretching, through her skin and down to the injury he can sense beneath. Two broken ribs. No organ damage, thank the Maker, but _so_ much bleeding. He knits the bone back together, brings down the swelling, tiny tendrils of light sewing up each individual blood vessel.

He can’t resist pushing further though.

There’s heavy bruising on her left shoulder. More on her upper chest. All her muscles ache from the long day of fighting and running in heavy armour. He lets his power flow through her…

She closes her hand over his.

“Stop.”

He pulls back at once, gaze immediately darting to hers. Has he gone too far, pushed too hard?

“You will pass out,” she adds, gently. “And I do not need you to do so much.”

He disagrees on the latter point, but the dim ache in the back of his head suggests she is probably near the mark on the former. He wishes he could do more though. Perhaps later, when they are back in Skyhold and he has all the lyrium potions he could ask for?

For now, though, he leans back against the rocks beside her. Looks out at the horizon, at the sky above them, glittering with stars. More than he could count in a lifetime.

She slips her hand into his again, shifting slightly so her head rests against his shoulder.

For the first time since they entered the Fade, he feels calm. Secure. Not a fraud, not a fake, not a failure. Perhaps Andraste did not shield him from harm, but Cassandra does.

She believes in him.

She trusts in him.

And that’s more than enough.


End file.
